Question

Discuss how you understand Plato’s theory of Forms and what it means. Make reference to the cave allegory and the divided line. In what ways does Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology here seem reasonable to you and in what ways doesn’t it seem reasonable? Why? What impact do Plato’s views on these subjects have for our understanding of the nature of justice?

Answer 1

As we know that the Students of Plato and other ancient philosophers divide philosophy into three parts: Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics. Generally perfect and certainly useful for pedagogical purposes, no rigid boundary scparates the parts Ethics, c.g., concerns how one ought to live and focuses on plcasure, virtuc, and happiness. Since, according to Plato (and Socrates), virtue and happiness require knowledge, e.g., knowledge of goods and evils, Plato's ethics is inseparable from his epistemology. Epistemology is the study of what knowledge is and how one comes to know. The many issues and topics included in epistemology are logic, Language, belief, perception, science, and knowledge. Metaphysics, or ontology, is that branch of philosophy whose special concern is to answer the question 'What is there? These expressions derive from Aristotle, the student of Plato. In a collection of his works, the most detailed treatise on the general topic of things that come after an exposition on natural things, ta phusika (from which English derives physics"). Since the Greek for 'after' is metu, this treatise is titled 'Metaphysics. In that effort, one finds the famous formula that philosophy studies being the Greek for which is on qua being. Hence the account of being is 'ontology'—the English sullix '-ology' signifying 'study of lor example, biology is the study of living things. The Metaphysics, then, studies how crything that is can be said or thought to be. Leaving to sciences like biology or physics or mathematics or psychology the task of addressing the special ways in which living things, or physical things, or mathematical objects, for example, numbers, or souls (minds) come to have the peculiar qualities each, respectively, has, the subject matter of metaphysics are philosophies and ideologies common to everything. He believed that whal we can see around us is a world of appearances, the material world. He asks, what does it mean lo be a tree or an animal. In the world, things like plants animals, and trees will all die out. The world of Forms, Plato suggests, holds the true Form of everything in our world and these cannot die Plato was 1100 concemed with trees, and he was concerned with the ideal Fonns of concepts such as Beauty, Justice, Justice and the Good. He observed that the terin beauty might be applied to different objects and people. Plato says that there needs to be somewhere where these inethods and Forms exist. The Philosopher is someone who tries to outllow the material world and see the Forms that lie behind it Plato, in his philosophy, gives a very important place to the idea of justice. "Dikaisyne," the Greek Word Plato used for justice which comes very near to the work 'morality' or 'rightcousness,' it properly includes within it the whole duty of man. It also covers the complete field of the individuals and conduct in so far as it affects others. Plato contended that justice is the quality of soul, in virtue of which men set aside the irrational aspiration to taste every pleasure and to get sellish happiness out of every object accommodaled themselves to the discharge of a sole function for the general benefit. Plato was highly displeased with the prevailing degenerating conditions in Athens. Plato saw in justice the only tonic cure and remedy of saving Athens from decay and collapse, for nothing agitated him in modern affairs more than meddlesomeness, and political selfishness, which was extensive in Athens of his day in particular and the entire Greek world in general